Sprinting in women’s cycling has leveled up in recent years. There are more opportunities than ever for fast finishers to have their day on the women’s calendar and more teams are organizing lead out trains for their sprinters. But is it enough for riders to focus solely on becoming the fastest woman in the peloton?
Although there have always been fast riders in the women’s peloton with plenty of sprint battles and rivalries in the past, many of those riders still would not be defined as ‘pure’ sprinters such as we see on the men’s side. The need to diversify due to smaller teams and lack of opportunity has historically meant that any woman physiologically inclined towards sprinting would also need to make sure she could climb well, taking speed off her top-end as a result.
But in the last few seasons there has been a shift. In particular, Lorena Wiebes and her former team, DSM, have redefined sprinting in women’s road racing, with Wiebes herself taking inspiration from those who specialise in it on the men’s side of the sport and the team organising a dedicated lead out train for the Dutch rider. Wiebes’ then-unmatched top speed from a bunch kick has seen her take over 60 career wins at just 23 years old, often leaving her rivals more than a bike length behind her.
This year, however, with Wiebes moving on to Team SD Worx, a new rival for the European Champion has emerged in the form of her ex-teammate and former last woman, Charlotte Kool. As a cog in the Wiebes lead out train in previous years, Kool’s full speed had rarely been shown and the 23-year-old had few chances to go for the win for herself. This year, however, Kool has emerged as one of few sprinters in the women’s peloton who can get the better of the previously-dominant Wiebes.
At the UAE Tour Women last month, Kool – who now benefits from the same leadout train featuring Pffeifer Georgi and Franziska Koch that aided many of Wiebes’ victories – used not only her speed but her tactical nouse to get the jump on her former teammate. In the final stage in particular, aerial shots of Kool’s surfing of wheels and squeezing through gaps marked her as the full-package sprinter who can position herself perfectly and, crucially, wait patiently to launch.
Of course, Wiebes is all of these things, too, but she is still adjusting to her new team and her decidedly smaller leadout with Barbara Guarischi as pretty much her only dedicated guide in a bunch kick.
With the depth of the women’s peloton increasing and the dominance of a sprinter like Wiebes, the bar has been raised. Not far behind Wiebes and Kool is another tier of fast women such as Trek-Segafredo’s Elisa Balsamo and UAE Team ADQ’s Chiara Consonni who are forced to up their game in order to compete with the Dutch pair.
For some who considered themselves competitive in sprint finishes in the past, this has forced them to change the direction of their careers. Speaking at the UAE Tour Women, Danish rider Emma Norsgaard, who had previously targeted fast finishes, explained that she has now turned her attention to becoming a Classics rider because she is unable to match the speed of the likes of Kool and Wiebes.
”If I was as good as them maybe I would just be a sprinter but I’m not and I’m not as fast as them. So I rather want to put my focus into something else,” she said.
“I mean, I either could choose to go the pure sprinter way or more like a Classic type of rider and I prefer the Classics. So I tried to go in this direction more and more from each season. And yeah, I hope that it can pay off somehow because pure sprinting…I think I want to move myself a little bit away from that.”
Despite their supreme sprinting skills, however, both Wiebes and Kool insist that they do not have the luxury of becoming pure sprinters in the current landscape of women’s racing.
“I think if you look at the men’s you see there are really ‘sprinter sprinters’ and I think in women’s cycling, especially if we only can start most of the races with six riders, you need to be way more all round,” Kool explained.
“And I think also all the big races except this one [UAE Tour] have a lot of altitude metres. So for sure, you need to be more all-round, especially also this year the Tour is quite a hard race. It’s not an easy sprint day. There are everywhere hills and I think yeah, for sure. You need to be more of an all-rounder than only being a sprinter.”
Wiebes echoed Kool with regards to becoming an all-round rider: “I think it’s been necessary because we don’t have a lot of real sprints on the women’s calendar. Like now we have three opportunities for a real sprint but normally you have to fight also some hills,” she said.
Perhaps surprisingly given their natural talents, both insisted that even given the option, they would prefer to be more versatile rather than focus exclusively on sprinting.
“For me personally I want to get the most out of myself. And I think I can do more than only sprinting. Especially now in Team SD Worx I will develop more and yeah, the focus will be on sprinting but also a bit more on the hilly races,” Wiebes said.
Kool, too, rejected the idea of becoming a pure sprinter. “I think it’s also really nice to keep challenging myself and become better and better also in harder races. But I think this is already a really nice start to have some confidence and build from here on,” she explained.
With the current level perhaps Kool and Wiebes can afford to sacrifice a bit of their edge in the sprints in order to perform at hillier Classics. It clearly pays off; Wiebes made it over the Muur van Geraardsbergen at Omloop het Nieuwsblad last weekend allowing her to sprint to second from a reduced group.
Still, she is hopeful for the future of sprinting for women on the road: “I think we have less pure sprinters but you never know. Like what I said before, with each new season there can be more pure sprinters.”
0 Commentaires